The Pianist

"Thank God, not me. He wants us to survive. Well, that's what we have to believe."

It's been a while since I had seen this, so I thought I'd watch it, I had forgotten a hell of a lot about this which only added to the enjoyment.

Title: The Pianist
Year of Release: 2002
Director: Roman Polanski
Genre: Biography/Drama/Music/War
Rating: 8.5/10

The Pianist is the almost unbelievable true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman's struggles to survive as a Jew in Warsaw during World War II. His will to live is driven by his desire to play the Piano.

After watching the short documentary thing on the other disc for The Pianist, I found out Roman Polanski himself survived the holocaust too as a child, he lost his mother because of it, and he was able to reunite with his father after the war, luckily. The documentary showed how much Polanski got involved with this film, he really made an effort to be realistic, authentic and true to the source material. It was incredibly obvious that this was all of those. During this terrible time there is no glamorizing what happened, there can't be any characters that is "cool" that you sit there admiring and longing to be like, if it was like that then this film would fail. Thankfully it shows it very dimly, and quite graphic.

The cinematography is kept simple, again, this is not the film to stylize with, there are some beautiful shots, but everything is relatively simple and traditional in the way it was filmed. The art direction was phenomenal on the other hand. The destroyed buildings, and the way everything was so pale and colourless. It helps paint the picture that this is a very downbeat and sad time and merges very well with the story.

Adrien Brody was made for this role, I haven't really seen him in anything else that was even half as great as his performance in this, I admire him a lot because this film, sure some just hit a lucky note, or have a great director to help, but he really seemed to put the effort in and do a great job. He was obviously dedicated, starving himself so he lost 30 pounds to look the part of a very hungry man, also learned the Piano, and another I learnt from the documentary, he wanted so much to feel the same sort of lonesomeness Wladyslaw would of felt, so to feel a small fraction of that, he sold almost everything he owned and got out of contact of a lot of people he knew during filming. I respect him a lot for doing that, it's good to see he didn't just learn his lines but really put an effort in learning his role.

This was, I think, my third viewing of this film, and I forgot the majority of the film. The final 30-50 minutes of this film is all I remembered really. It's his most isolated time, though the rest of the film is magnificent, I don't know, the last quarter or so is the best, I don't want to spoil anything, but I'm sure you will be amazed, because this is one incredible story, and it's so perfect for a film that it feels unreal because it's just so damn extraordinary.

That's all I have to say really. A great film about the holocaust, survival and hope. I recommend it to fans of Polanski as this is quite unique, also fans of Brody should definitely see this because his performance in this is unmatched by any of his other performances and it's just a great film.

Click me to view the trailer!